I was quickly brought back down to earth after visiting Art Chicago. As usual, the toxic mix of money and decontextualized art was nearly devastating. For the record, I think these fairs have a lot of good work and I’m grateful for the business that gets done. I’m just not sure it is healthy for artists to spend much time watching this business get done.
It is easy to become cynical. After too much time at the fair, you begin wondering if the successful artists are the ones who’ve devoted themselves to branding and business.
Easter week at the Met was a mob scene. I found myself trying to imagine the least popular areas to get away from the crowds but i wasn’t passing up the opportunity to visit the 20th century wing. My focus on the people brought me to a realization which had escaped me in the past. A good percentage of the visitors were snapping pictures with their cell phones. What do they do with these pictures?
I have a pretty good cell phone but the pictures are still not as good as the ones on the internet of just about every piece in the Met.
Are these trophies? Bagged to increase the stature of the clicker in his social circle. Are they aligning themselves with something perceived to be greater than the everyday? Maybe they just don’t have time to look now but will review their visit later on the phone.
I noticed the following in an article about the movie Passio being performed this week at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Yes performed, it’s a silent film accompanied by Trinity Choir performing the Arvo Pärt composition St. John Passion.
“The movie evokes a theme that has increasingly surfaced in the contemporary world of media inundation. It suggests how our obsession with studying, multiplying and beautifying our images robs us of our humanity. Instead of contemplating paintings in a museum, visitors prefer to take pictures of them with their digital cameras. Reality television is unreality. And in the movies, violent, digitally enhanced spectacle is steadily subverting human drama. Studying life through a camera’s lens turns us into detached observers reluctant to tear ourselves away from the role of clinical voyeur to take action against the very inhumanity we witness and record.”
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 27, 2007
What’s the story here? Do we not have enough time to contemplate so we’ll TIVO life and hopefully get to it later? How many Cd’s have I bought that I haven’t had time to listen to more than once? I rarely watch a film more than once so why own the DVD? Am I increasing my social stature with my vast library of media I could choose to access at any time but I’m so important I don’t have time for such things.
I saw an interesting film on Demand through Showtime. The film wasn’t as interesting as the story told as preface. it was part of the “This American Life” series episode 4 “The Camera Man”.
The part that intrigued me was an animated short by cartoonist Chris Ware about the danger observing life from behind the safe distance of a camera lens. Chris told a story about a grade school phenomenon which had a bad outcome. The kids in the playground took to playing tv show games. Interviewing each other with cardboard cameras and developing competing “networks” to get the exclusive story. A cute game until the whole schoolyard was caught reporting the news as two kids beat the shit out of each other. The teachers took all the cameras away and the trend was over.
What about us? Who’ll take our cameras away? How many home video scenes will we be outraged at before we realize someone was standing around filming this and not doing or saying anything? How far away from the art can we get? If I capture art in my phone is that enough? Will I be safe then? Can i avoid participating if I’m recording?
What if you were the greatest artist and no one paid any attention. It’s an old story with a new twist as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso performs in the subway and can’t get enough for a meal. The Washington Post has the story.
First encounter which registered was on my flickr travels i met people who were drawing in books. My upbringing was such that we were loathe to turn down the corner of the page or break the spine of a book. I’ve still yet to find one I could draw in. I saw it recently at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in the brilliant exhibit Drawn to the Edge.
I had expected an exhibit of horror vacui but was intrigued to find that although that was the original title of the exhibit Mr. Baumgold had expanded on the theme to include works which played with the edge and others which used books and other surfaces as another edge. Julie Doucets work stands out not only for it’s edgy drawings but because the pages shown here were from her “My New York Diary” set in Washington Heights. I was pleased to see Tony Fitzpatrick represented an Mr. Baumgold graciously clued me in to his source of collage material. You may be familiar with Tonys work if you’ve ever seen a Steve Earle album cover.
